


If That's What It Takes

by sadswansongs (agentwhalesong)



Series: Desperately Apart [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-13 23:34:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20182558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentwhalesong/pseuds/sadswansongs
Summary: Scully's POV of Mulder being gone in season 9. Currently a WIP that will probably consist of 4 chapters. Meant as a sequel to Could It Be Any Harder?, but reading that one before is not a requirement.I borrowed the title from Céline Dion.





	1. Going, going, gone

**Going, going, gone**

They have kissed several times before, although not enough to her liking. All of them have had a different taste: first times, passion, happiness, love, teasing… but this specific kiss tastes like pure sadness.

Their tongues don’t want to let go, so they linger; not really moving, but not exactly stopped either. It’s tenderness in its purest form; it’s sadness in the form of the tears that fall between them and join their lips. Sadness shouldn’t ever be associated with kisses; kisses shouldn’t ever be associated with sadness. Now it is all ruined and the tears only reinforce it. Still, she doesn’t want to forget this kiss. Till the end of times, she wants to remember how his lips feel against hers, how his tongue touches hers so gently it feels like it’s careful not to hurt her in any way. She wants to remember his thumbs tracing circles on her cheeks, his lips sucking her lower lip, his nose brushing against hers so perfectly it’s almost as if they are each other’s missing parts. And they are.

As their lips break apart, it’s like they’re shouting, “No, please, come back! Why is my other half going away?”

The nose feels the same as the lips, as the cool air replaces the once warm piece of skin that was connected to it just a second ago.

Even the tears — which are now such a mix of Mulder’s and Scully’s you couldn’t tell each other apart — even the tears seem to be saying they belong together, that when one cries, the other does too, but it’s only ever right if they do it together.

Their enemy now is the clock on the wall, ticking, ticking, ticking. She thinks she’ll throw something at it so it will stop laughing at her like this. She knows she won’t because it is also the clock that will eventually tell her it’s time for him to be back.

Apparently, the other half of every part of her body is thinking the same because, in a whisper, he says the words she’s been dreading to hear.

“It’s time.”

She nods because she knows, even though she wants to tell her rationality to go to hell. Her rationality is what convinced him to go, after all. Her rationality has always been what keeps her sane, but now it seems to be doing quite the opposite.

“Please, stay safe,” she manages to say. She doesn’t know how her voice gets out, though.

He smiles weakly and raises her hand to his lips. His kiss on the back of her hand lingers, and she wishes with all her being that she can still feel it for as long as he is away.

When he went away the first time, she didn’t have a chance of saying goodbye. At least this time they’re doing things properly.

The first time, she didn’t even tell him she loved him.

She doesn’t want to say it now because she knows that, if she says it, then it means it is really time for him to go. But if she doesn’t say it, it will be just like last time. She holds her words in her mouth, though, for he is preparing to say something himself.

“I’ll be thinking of you both every single day.”

He kisses her forehead and then turns around. His bags are all inside the trunk of Skinner’s car, waiting along with their boss. The only thing that’s missing for his crazy journey to start now is him.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

The damn clock is still laughing at them.

She still holds his hand until it almost slips away, but she grabs his index finger and tugs it, so he has no choice but look at her again. His eyes are red, and she decides that what she has to say won’t change anything, so she says it.

“I love you. So much.”

In a second, he is back to her, his arms encircling her and holding her so tight she thinks she might run out of air. But she doesn’t care, all she wants is the safety of his arms. She wants him to never let go.

“Dana?”

His voice is low, but a reminder: they can’t stay in her hallway like this and wait until all their troubles are gone. She looks up at him.

“Yes?”

He shakes his head, as if he is about to say something big and important, but suddenly changes his mind.

“I love you too,” he whispers. And whatever it was that he was thinking before couldn’t be more important than this.

He gives her a quick peck on the lips.

“The next time I see you, I’ll kiss you so hard it’ll make whoever is around blush,” his mouth brushes hers a little as he speaks.

She chuckles softly in spite of herself.

He turns around then and she lets him go, wondering how many times a heart can break.

[She said it to him once before, that she didn’t know if she could bear losing him again](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15858099/chapters/36940137). She has to now, because their child is crying inside her apartment. Maybe the baby is sensing the sadness in the air as well. She doesn’t wait to see him turn around the corner before she gets back in.

She nurses William quietly and then puts him down on the bassinet as she works through the mess of papers Mulder has left.

They’re all plans for when it’s time for him to come back — phone numbers, people who will be useful for fake IDs, account numbers, preparations for where to go in case anything goes wrong. He didn’t even sleep planning all this and, although she feels sorry for how tired he must be now, she is also thankful for the comfort this planning brings.

But the planning is not the only thing that brings her comfort. There is a small piece of paper tucked under her purse, the purse she threw haphazardly on the couch when she got back from the hospital with William.

She unfolds it, and his handwriting makes her heart beat faster again.

_I’ll be back, I promise_

_Yours,_

_F. (M)_

She giggles for she finds it funny that he decided to write his first name and make sure she knew it was him writing by adding an ‘M’. She sees it as a sign of progress that he’s trying to call himself by his first name. It may be even a sign that he wants her to call him like this, too. She tries not to think that it may be a sign that he thinks he won’t come back at all.

She shakes her head for he promised it – with kisses, with spoken words, with written words. He promised it, not only this time, but the other time when he promised he would never leave. He is leaving now, so he has to keep at least this promise, this promise that he will come back.

He will be back, she thinks.

She prefers to believe this version of her thoughts.

Maybe everything will turn out alright. She just needs to have a little faith.


	2. Repetition

**Repetition**

She has lost count of how many times she has turned the piece of paper between her fingers, how many times she has stopped it between her thumb and index finger and gently stroked every word as she read them over and over, and over again.

_That kiss I promised is not long now._

If only.

This is what he replied after she sent for him, when the agony in her chest seemed to mingle with the happiness she felt and left a bittersweet taste in her mouth. Now the taste in her mouth is only bitter, for he isn’t coming back anymore.

It hurts to think of his loneliness so well translated into words.

_I want to come home. To you, and to William._

These words echo in her brain, as if wandering all over, looking for a place to where they can attach themselves. It’s like they got lost between being discarded for not being needed anymore and staying there because they keep on being true. A void made of words might be the best definition, if there were such a thing.

Her loneliness is as palpable as his, and this is what makes her realize she has always been wrong. Loneliness isn’t a choice in some cases.

This all feels like a nightmare, a huge nightmare that started years ago and that only seems to go deeper and deeper. It’s a nightmare inside an already scary nightmare. An endless loop she can’t seem to stop for the life of her. Mulder being abducted, Mulder leaving, Mulder coming back but never reaching his destination due to super soldiers and life’s inability to leave them alone for one single second.

Even one second would be enough.

She sighs as the clock on the wall – the same clock that has been laughing at her since he left – ticks its incessant, annoying ticks. It is laughing at her again, she knows. Only this time, it seems to be following the rhythm of her heartbeat, both sounding completely different and yet exactly the same.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Mulder.

Mulder.

Mulder.

She startles in bed as this last sound reaches her ears loudly, and she realizes she has fallen briefly asleep while her mind wandered to the ticking of the clock and to the sound of her heartbeat. This damn clock; this damn heart.

The only thing that makes her stop paying attention to them both is the small being lying beside her in bed, deep asleep in his own world, completely unaware of the comfort he brings just by being there, just by existing. He usually sleeps in his own room, but tonight she needs him close to remind her that there is still a future. She makes a mental note to write all this down on her journal, the one she started writing for him to read when he’s older, when hopefully all these troubles are long past them. She wants him to find comfort in her words someday as much as she finds comfort in his existence.

She analyzes the baby’s features, trying to find similarities between him and her, between Mulder and him, but she can’t. It’s like their genes melted so perfectly together that she can’t tell what part of him is hers and what part of him is Mulder’s. She smiles in spite of herself. William is her living proof that not everything needs a scientific explanation. Her miracle. Her and Mulder’s miracle.

_Never give up on a miracle_, she hears Mulder say now, even though he isn’t anywhere near her, even though she has no idea where he might be. It is not the first time she hears him, and she tries not to think that the other time she heard him as clear as day like this, he was six feet under the ground.

She isn’t surprised when tears come to her eyes every time images of Mulder show up in her head, uninvited as they are. Not that she doesn’t want to think about him, but the pain of having him so desperately apart is almost unbearable. She shakes her head when other unwelcome images fill her brain, like alien spaceships, a cold dead body, coffins, tombstones, an eternal numbness she never thought she would have to feel again.

At least this time there’s a great chance he is alive, she reminds herself. At least this time there are none of those things involved.

She shakes her head harder when the word “yet” invades her mind without any invitation.

Would she know if he died? Would the news get to her in any way?

She holds William’s tiny hand to make sure this is real life and not another nightmare, and his hand immediately wraps around her thumb. William smiles in his sleep and she finds herself smiling again through her tears. He does take a few things after Mulder, after all. Smiling in his sleep was what Mulder always did when she held his hand to make sure he was real. He would never wake up, though. It was always as if he just felt her love through her touch and he smiled because it made him happy. Seeing William do the same now simultaneously makes her happy and breaks her heart.

She hopes William can feel her love through her touch; she hopes Mulder can feel her love through her thoughts.

She suddenly wishes telepathy were real. Hasn’t she wished that in the past as well?

It’s the repetition that kills her. It’s the same old story, just with different events. It’s like the clock ticking and her heart thundering inside her chest. It’s all the same, and yet everything is different.

She closes her eyes and tells her brain to shut off, to think of good memories instead of the bad ones or equally bad hypotheses. She needs to sleep and be well to teach her classes tomorrow, for she has lost a whole day already and worrying won’t do her any good. She has found great comfort in her work as well and, sometimes, she hears Mulder’s voice in the voice of a student or another who can’t take science as their only truth. It reminds her of the old days of trying to prove Mulder wrong and ending up as confused as the next person when no plausible explanation was found.

She chuckles as she thinks of their bickering, of how this bickering turned into bantering most times, and of how this bantering transformed into something else entirely, something they were stupid enough to keep to themselves for seven long years.

Her heart feels warmer at these thoughts, and she thanks her own mind for the good memories and for calming her heart rate enough to make her sleepy again. She wonders for a moment if it was really her mind doing its own work or if William’s hand around her thumb had something to do with it.

She takes another look at the printed paper with Mulder’s words and kisses it for some reason she can’t explain. Maybe she expects him to feel the kiss from miles and miles away. Maybe she’s too tired to be awake at almost one in the morning.

She decides she’ll write to him tomorrow, even if she doesn’t get an answer back. She needs to try to make sure he’s alright. She needs to tell him she’s still waiting, that she will be waiting, and that he needs to hang in there. She hopes the right words will come to her to say all this, and she hopes with all her being that he is safe and sound despite the trap into which she almost made him fall.

She falls asleep as she says a prayer for his safety, and the nightmares are for once transformed into dreams when the promised kiss makes an appearance twice during the night.


End file.
